The Great Mourinho Myth

An Inter side which was entirely capable of producing some compelling, fluid, and imaginative play of its own – Mourinho had followed winning Serie A at his first attempt by signing Diego Milito, Wesley Sneijder, and Samuel Eto’o, not the business of a man looking for his team to prioritise execution of the defensive arts – won the home leg 3-1.

Faced with the challenge of holding that lead against the eminent club side of this era, Mourinho didn’t head to the Nou Camp with the aim of playing the Catalan’s at their own game.  To do so would have been madness – inviting Barca’s tiki-taka maestros to luxuriate in the open spaces they so crave to habitually annihilate inferior foes.

Inter’s resolute and fiercely disciplined display saw them through.  The restriction of their esteemed hosts to a single goal was all the more notable for Thiago Motta’s 26 minute sending off – a dismissal ‘won’ by Barca’s serial play-actor, Sergio Busquets.

With another Champions League trophy on the Mourinho mantelpiece, – Bayern Munich were swept aside in the final – it was off to Real Madrid to occupy the hottest of managerial seats.

The task of superseding that same Barcelona outfit over the course of a season proved too much in year one.  Real recovered from a chastening start – which included a 5-0 humbling in the Nou Camp – to post 92 points, scoring 102 goals in the process.

Mourinho’s maiden transfer trading in the Spanish capital had brought the arrival of two of world football’s stellar forward thinking protagonists.  Mesut Ozil and Angel Di Maria were key cogs in a unit that also boasted the skills of Cristiano Ronaldo, and which went on to defeat Barca in a Spanish Cup final.

Jose Mourinho doesn’t go two years without leading his team to the Number One position in their home country.  In 2012, the La Liga crown was wrestled from the mighty Catalan’s.  Madridistas were treated to a season from the heavens, as their team amassed an incredible 100 points, in the process scoring a mind-blowing 121 goals.

Both derby matches – against city adversaries Atletico – were won 4-1.  The toppling of the loathed defending champions was completed with a 2-1 away triumph in the campaign’s second ‘Clasico’ fixture.

It was only during his third and final year at the Bernabeu, when Mourinho betrayed the very first signs of weakness in his hitherto gilded career.

That hint of vulnerability had nothing to do with his team’s goal-scoring prowess.  Indeed, crucially for the frenzied Madrid support base, their side came through four clashes with Barcelona unscathed.  Nevertheless, regardless of their hitting the net on another 103 occasions, Mourinho saw the prized Spanish crown head back to Catalonia.

It was the ‘Special One’s’ famed confrontational nature, so often cited as an essential facet of his enduring success, which proved his ultimate undoing at Madrid.

There was a sense of serious unrest emanating from the Bernabeu all term – a situation borne of Mourinho’s very public falling out with Los Blancos idols, Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos.

For once, the doyen of his trade had picked a fight with the wrong individuals.  It was a move which would be akin to David Moyes breezing into Old Trafford and declaring Ryan Giggs ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, or Moyes’ successor at Everton, Roberto Martinez, deciding that Leighton Baines is not of the necessary quality to be part of a ‘brave new era’ at Goodison Park.

The pernicious effect of that internal discontent had its most destructive impact at the season’s denouement.  Real’s chaotic defending, throughout the team, when Robert Lewandowski struck four times for Borussia Dortmund in the two sides’ Champions League semi-final in April, was as far removed from that which is expected of a Mourinho unit as is possible.

Having been unable to rescue that tie, with a Spanish Cup final derby against Atletico still to play, it was unimaginable that the Portuguese boss could end the campaign empty-handed.  As if to define a horrible year, Real threw away a one-goal lead on their own ground and had Ronaldo sent-off – eventually losing 2-1.  The newly professed ‘happy one’ was sent to the stands as the ugliness which often attaches itself to Mourinho’s worst days rose to the surface.

Now with the most unique of individuals back in what he calls, ‘my dugout, my stadium’ and with ‘my people’, the football world is watching on with a strange mix of fascination, voyeurism, and no little curiosity.

The certainty of old which Mourinho brought to his employers of the day – that of the imminent arrival of a cascade of trophies – is not quite as fixed as it once was.  The irascible and entrancing 50 year-old still arrives with one guarantee, though.  His team will score goals – and plenty of them.  Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

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